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    How to Be Free
    How to Be Free
    How to Be Free
    Ebook99 pages2 hours

    How to Be Free

    By Joe Blow

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    How can we free ourselves from mental suffering? How can we unlock what the poet William Blake referred to as “the mind-forged manacles” - those unhelpful, unfounded and inflexible habits of thought which keep us from reaching our true creative potential?

    This book provides practical advice on how to achieve this.

    But it also offers an imaginative holistic theoretical framework for an understanding of the nature of the universe, the psychological history of the human race and the meaning of life.

    What Readers Have Said About "How to Be Free" :

    "I just wanted to thank you for publishing 'How to Be Free'. It helped me through many hard times that have recently occurred. My self-esteem has been raised because of you."

    "This is a book that is full of insight and as a psychology major, I would highly recommend this book for all open minds."

    "Opened my eyes and changed my life."

    "...it fucking changed my life."

    "This book is dark, deep and brilliantly written. I'm very moved by the author's candidness about mental illnesses, a subject that has become extinct in our conversations and dealings. Here is a person who reached deep inside himself and spilled his soul out onto each page... and he did it so eloquently. I applaud him for bringing me to tears."

    "Really loved the book. It made me think, self reflect and take a deeper look at my own self."

    "I found your book particularly helpful at a low point in my life... You have given me new hope..."

    "Your book has made me a happier person already!"

    "...an awesome book..."

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAussiescribbler
    Release dateSep 13, 2011
    ISBN9781465978851
    Author

    Joe Blow

    Joe Blow is the pseudonym for a man who, though currently happy and high functioning, has had a long history of mental illness, including endogenous depression, bipolar disorder and obsessive compulsive disorder. His writing is the product of a lifelong struggle to integrate flashes of insight and powerful symbols which appeared to him, often during what we might define as psychotic episodes, with observable reality and a rudimentary knowledge of science by appropriating useful concepts from the work of such iconoclastic thinkers as Wilhelm Reich, R. D. Laing, Keith Johnstone, William Blake and Oscar Wilde. If asked whether this approach and this conceptual framework have provided him with a secure foundation for emotional stability, happiness and flowering creativity, Blow would reply, “Well, so far so good.” He also writes humorous erotica under the pseudonym Aussiescribbler.

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    • 5/5
      I identified with this book more then you could ever believe. One of the best books I’ve ever read!!

    Book preview

    How to Be Free - Joe Blow

    How can we free ourselves from mental suffering? How can we unlock what the poet William Blake referred to as the mind-forged manacles - those unhelpful, unfounded and inflexible habits of thought which keep us from reaching our true creative potential?

    This book provides practical advice on how to achieve this.

    But it also offers an imaginative holistic theoretical framework for an understanding of the nature of the universe, the psychological history of the human race and the meaning of life.

    How To be Free

    by Joe Blow

    Smashwords Edition published by Aussiescribbler

    Copyright 2011 Joe Blow

    Cover image from http://www.123rf.com,

    Smashwords Edition, License Notes

    Thank you for downloading this free ebook. Although this is a free book, it remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be reproduced, copied and distributed for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy at Smashwords.com, where they can also discover other works by this author. Thank you for your support.

    The Author

    Joe Blow is the pseudonym for a man who, though currently happy and high functioning, has had a long history of mental illness, including endogenous depression, bipolar disorder and obsessive compulsive disorder. This book is the product of a lifelong struggle to integrate flashes of insight and powerful symbols which appeared to him, often during what we might define as psychotic episodes, with observable reality and a rudimentary knowledge of science by appropriating useful concepts from the work of such iconoclastic thinkers as Wilhelm Reich, R. D. Laing, Keith Johnstone, William Blake and Oscar Wilde.

    If asked whether this approach and this conceptual framework have provided him with a secure foundation for emotional stability, happiness and flowering creativity, Blow would reply, Well, so far so good.

    Contents

    Introduction

    What I’m Not

    Why Joe Blow?

    The Love of Perfection is the Root of All Evil

    What Is God?

    Radical Self-acceptance

    Armouring

    What Is The History of Human Neurosis

    Our Individual Experience

    My Own Journey

    Sexuality

    Sexual Fixations

    What Is The Imagination?

    The Scary Side of The Imagination

    Degrees of Being Alive

    Depression

    Self-Acceptance and a Troubled World

    Emotional Scars

    Compassion is Projected Self-Pity

    The Inner Child

    What is Consciousness?

    Impasses to Thought

    Fight Against Only That Which You Wish to Become

    Violence is Admission of Error

    A New World is Rising

    General Advice on Becoming Free

    Keith Johnstone

    A Closing Message

    Feedback etc.

    Introduction

    The aim of this book is to set you free. But free from what? Free from neurosis. Free from the feeling that you have to obey authority. Free from emotional intimidation. Free from addiction. Free from inhibition.

    The key to happiness, mental health and being the most that we can be is absolute and unconditional self-acceptance. The paradox is that many of our problems are caused by trying to improve ourselves, censor our thinking, make up for past misdeeds and struggling with our negative feelings whether of depression or aggression.

    But if we consider ourselves in our entirety in this very moment, we know these things :

    1. Anything we have done is in the past and cannot be changed, thus it is pointless to do anything else but accept it. No regrets or guilt.

    2. While our actions can harm others, our thoughts and emotions, in and of themselves, never can. So we should accept them and allow them to be and go where they will. While emotions sometimes drive actions, those who completely accept their emotions and allow themselves to feel them fully, have more choice over how they act in the light of them.

    Self-criticism never made anyone a better person. Anyone who does a good deed under pressure from their conscience or to gain the approval of others takes out the frustration involved in some other way. The basis for loving behaviour towards others is the ability to love ourselves. And loving ourselves unconditionally, means loving ourselves exactly as we are at this moment.

    This might seem to be complacency, but in fact the natural activity of the individual is healthy growth, and what holds us back from it is fighting with those things we can’t change and the free thought and emotional experience which is the very substance of that growth.

    Divide and conquer - that is a key philosophy in military campaigns. And the same applies to the individual. An individual at war with themselves is easily dominated or controlled by others. If we want to become a free individual the way to do so is through individuation, allowing the divided parts of our nature to integrate into a unified whole.

    We may feel that there is within us a battle between the desire to do things we feel are right and the desire to do things we feel are wrong. The battle of good and evil.

    But what are good and evil?

    Good is that which contributes to the health of the individual or the society or wider ecological system of which they are a part.

    So what do we mean by evil? We could say that evil is anything which adversely effects the health of the individual or the system. But the term evil is a very strong one. Selfishness has a negative impact on the health of the system by interfering with the free flow of material, information or energy. But we wouldn’t consider minor acts of selfishness, like eating more than our share of a piece of cake, to be evil. Evil is a term we use to describe those acts which cause significant suffering or otherwise do major harm. The essence of evil is the imposition of the will. If we take something from somebody against their will - their life, their property, their dignity, their humanity  - this is clearly evil. But also it is an act of evil to try to control another’s behaviour through fear or guilt or other forms of deliberate manipulation. The fact that such behaviour has a dire impact on the health of the individual and the social system can be demonstrated when we consider that the worst forms of socially-sanctioned cruelty we know of - the Holocaust, the witch burnings, the Spanish Inquisition, the stoning to death of women by the Taliban - have been the work of societies in which the repression and control of the individual through fear and/or guilt were the norm.

    Of course there is such a thing as necessary evil. We have to impose our will on those who behave destructively towards others, etc. But it must be recognised that this does not solve the problem of evil. At best it contains it. But, more often than not, even this is an illusion and the act of using our will to contain evil sows the seeds of more evil behaviour. Only the healing of individuals and of society can actually decrease the incidence of evil.

    But what we need to understand, if we are to understand ourselves, is our own impulses to engage in destructive or dominating behaviour towards others.

    If we have such impulses they originate in a lack of acceptance of some aspect of ourselves. Hostility towards

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